by the stairs

Going out yesterday morning, I found this buck waiting by the stairs leading down from the deck.

He was nibbling cotoneaster berries on a small tree self-sown on the edge of the path and he wasn’t worried about me at all. How beautiful, the length of his throat, his liquid eye, and the velvet on his antlers. I wonder if he’s the same one we’d see last year, coming home at night from our chamber music festival, the one that ate nasturtiums and went off into the dark woods still chewing.